Gmail for Android Now Supports Exchange Accounts

An update to the Gmail app for Android is adding support for Microsoft Exchange accounts. This capability was previously provided only on Google’s own Nexus devices, apparently.

The original blog post announcing this change is coming up with an error, so I’ll have to go by Google’s social networking posts instead. Which is fine, because this one is understandable enough.

“All your mail in one place,” the Gmail team tweeted. “An update to the Android Gmail app is now rolling out with support for Exchange accounts.” A similarly brief post on Google+ basically repeats the message.

Put simply, you can now add three kinds of accounts to Gmail: Google (Gmail or Google Apps), “personal” (IMAP/POP), and Exchange. The latter is, of course, the new addition.

You may know that in older Android versions, Google provided two email clients, Gmail and an old-school Email, which was for POP, IMAP and Exchange accounts. Email always lagged behind Gmail, and of course it was weird having two different clients for different kinds of accounts.

I write “assume” there since I haven’t yet figured out how to configure my own Office 365 business account for Gmail: It asks for server and port configuration, but that’s for IMAP/SMTP, not Exchange. So I’ll need to keep working on that one, I guess. (Anyone?)

And while I’m throwing wrenches into things, I’ll also point out that Google Inbox is even better when it comes to email, with a super-simple UI. The problem? Inbox currently only works with Google accounts.